EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) Militants in Egypt's northern Sinai Peninsula struck a police bus with a roadside bomb on Monday, wounding nine people and killing with a gunshot to the head a young conscript who had survived the blast, security officials said.
The 21-year-old had jumped from the moving bus after the explosion and was likely kidnapped by militants who shot him and dumped his body on the side of the road, they said. One of the wounded in the bus attack was a civilian, the rest were conscripts.
The blast on the outskirts of el-Arish, northern Sinai's provincial capital, came amid a counterinsurgency operation by Egypt's military and police in the volatile desert region.
The bus had carrying conscripts from the border town of Rafah, near the Palestinian Gaza Strip, to el-Arish and was escorted by an armored police car. The bomb was set off by remote control, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The attack comes as Egypt's military presses its largest offensive in years against militants in Sinai in response to attacks the army says have killed more than 100 policemen and soldiers since the July coup that ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi from power. The deadliest attack took place Aug. 19 when unidentified gunmen pulled 25 police conscripts off minibuses and shot them dead on the side of the main road linking Rafah to el-Arish.